In some cases, sure. Michele Bachmann isn’t any crazier now than she was in 2008, and she probably didn’t run in 2008 because she saw there weren’t a lot of voters looking for a candidate like her. Santorum hasn’t held elected office in years and he’s running because he thinks someone might listen to him, and Gingrich thought people might see him as the one guy who knew what the fuck he was talking about. But it’s definitely true that the Tea Party factions have been pushing the rest of the party right for two-plus years. Most of the politicians are just trying to keep up and keep them happy. It was very obvious during the debt crisis that even Boehner wanted to strike a deal because a default would have been a disaster, and he had a lot of trouble doing it because he couldn’t get the Tea Party freshmen to sign off on any kind of compromise. The Senate Republicans and older politicians who, in some cases at least, were elected to do stuff, had a big problem reining them in.
Romney might not have any deeply held convictions, but it’s also true that he ran in 2008 as a guy who could get things done and was very proud of the health plan he helped craft in Massachusetts - one that was built on some conservative ideas. Now he’s trying to appeal to people who hate that plan and think the whole thing is a liberal monstrosity. That’s what it looks like when a politician figures out the winds have shifted.
He believes he wants to be president, and I suppose that’s rational, and since everything else he says and does in in pursuit of that goal, it’s all rational too.
I should have said that Romney is the exceptional candidate because he has no stronger principle than winning. I think his strategy is the right one – just don’t go out as far on a limb as the others, and watch them fall off as they end up freaking people out.
I just read a story that Perry might skip future debates, which I think is a good strategy for him. Those interviewed for the story think it’s a bad idea – “like skipping the 3rd quarter of a football game.” I think it’s good because Perry has been terrible in the debates, so it’s like avoiding drinking poison.
I think you are right about Romney - but just about any candidate does this kind of thing except whackjobs like Ron Paul. All of them think these extreme positions are the way to win. Romney would move back to the center if he wins the nomination. I wonder if Perry and Bachmann even know how to move to the center - in any case they’ve left too much of a paper trail. They’re kind of like Mirror-Kirk in this way.
Bad move. He’d lose the headlines, and everyone will assume he would have lost. His only chance is a Hail Mary debate where he surprises everyone and wins. Of course, the primary votes may change everything but he is not going to go up in the polls with an empty chair.
Would someone do me a solid and summarize which “extreme views” Robertson is objecting to? The article doesn’t say, and I’d prefer not to watch the video because seeing that sanctimonious assclown’s yammering fat stupid face is bad for my dental work. TIA.
Keep on clapping your hands you might be able to bring him back from the dead. When his polling numbers can be measured in single person rather then even a single percentage point I think it’s time to stick a fork in him.
Clip doesn’t show him addressing any specific position, save for what seems to be a passing mention of “Cain or whoever” gaining favor with the base; he elaborates on the Johnson quote as “they don’t realize I’m the one who can give them what they want, but I can’t do that if they make me lose the election”.
He probably means a combination of all the various forms of Tea Party/Birther pander-talk. We know he wants tax cuts and loosened regulations on big business and stronger restrictions on abortion and gay rights. He knows he can’t get that by promising electrified border fences, a trade war with China, Gold Standard/flat tax fantasies, privatized Social Security, attacking policies approved *by Republicans *as if they were socialist anti-American conspiracies, etc. or by having the likes of Gingrich try to champion “values”.
Essentially he’s telling the Republicans: Don’t pull a Christine O’Donnell with the presidential nomination.
Perhaps he remembers that “flying under the radar” (i.e., dissembling one’s actual politics) was a strategy that served local RW-extremist candidates very well in 1980s and '90s. How soon they forget!
